I just discovered that I really like playing Sedna. Heal + Pounce makes me feel pretty versatile. Now I just need to figure out how to appropriately stack items with her and I’m set! There was a minion-focused Sedna in the same game, and I felt like I was just running circles around her.
I’m getting to be quite the little terror with Unclean Beast. All I take is the vomit, Diseased Claws, and the skill that ups your weapon damage and attack speed. Blade Of The Serpent is the possibly the best favour item in the game, it lets me completely ignore helmets and focus on health, dps and speed.
Things I Would Like To See:
-Countdown timers on buffs and DoTs.
-More than two teams at a time.
-Alternate costumes, possibly unlockable with favour points? I love that sort of thing.
-Some level of persistence. Even an ingame profile with a player’s stats would be fine. I want some kind of carrot for having more wins than losses.
I don’t really know what to make of Demigod at this point…
I’m still playing it, but I’m becoming frustrated with all of the bullshit. I played or four games over the weekend.
- The first was a great 2vs2 battle, the two of us Rooks got pushed around in the beginning (a lot), but we over came and pushed them back and destroyed their citadel. Great game, great fun.
- The next was a good game, but we got destroyed basically. 2vs2 and we just couldn’t hold Flags vs. Sedna and UB. Oh wells, still a fun game.
- Next two games I tried? Both in Skirmish, both started up with AI. One I decided to play because I had been waiting awhile, another I disconnected on. Both of them show me as a loss (even though I handily won the one I played only AI in).
I can’t tell you how tired I am of playing the stupid AI in this game. If I click automatch in any other game RTS game, I don’t get bots. In this game, not only do I get them, when I do the system counts it as an automatic loss.
That’s killing enjoyment on two levels and I don’t know how much longer I’m going to bother with Demigod because of it.
And that isn’t even talking about the constant bugs. Favor goes from working to not working, I’ve killed a Demigod a couple of times only to have the system say he suicided and I don’t get any credit and the AI in the game continues to be dumb (my minions don’t listen often and even my DG doesn’t listen sometimes).
I’m about to say fuck it. Which would really suck for such a great game concept. It’s really starting to feel like something Obsidian or the like would have released. Great concept, lousy follow through.
Matt, just don’t play skirmishes. I played a couple of games last night (one with a randomly found QT3’er - Hi Blair!) out of the custom list. First off, it’s easier to find a host geographically close to you. Second, you rarely end up playing against the AI unless there’s a disconnect frenzy. That still happens, but it’s less common.
The stat tracking is just flat broken. I mean, looking at my Pantheon page shows so many different numbers for the same thing - it’s a bit silly. I hate the fact that I have losses for games I haven’t played, but what can you do? I’d hope that GPG/SD will do a full stat wipe once they get that stuff tracking right.
I’m off to go get another win with Sedna. Good times.
Yeah, stat tracking is messed up. Worse, favor is still broken. Nobody I played with all weekend had been accumulating favor for days.
My wishlist is extensive, but let me chime in with support for:
- a “party display” showing your team’s demigods, player names, health, and mana. These should be targetable to target friendly spells.
- clickable mini-map
- countdown timers on effects/buffs
- ability to browse and purchase favor items outside of a match
- option to prevent the game from zooming and rotating the map when I spawn.
- Ability to move the map and watch the match while dead and waiting to respawn. Obviously you wouldn’t be able to see anything you wouldn’t see if you were alive.
- have the game remember my health bar setting (the ~ key)
- improved in-game chat UI
- Voice chat with push-to-talk option (probably more of a long-term thing, but gotta get started early on it)
- click column heads to sort custom game list
Demigod could have been a fun little game in theory, and it may be deep on some levels, but it’s one game in a vast sea of good games. I’m not holding out much hope.
Does Demigod transmit creep data between players? If so, that’s poor design. All players should calculate all actions locally except for the Demigods and their summonable creeps.
Well, except creeps aren’t completely deterministic. They get batted about, they deter towards nearby enemies, including demigods, etc.
Hi! That was pretty fun even though my team got our butts handed to us. You guys had a great strategy going that I was trying to get our three guys to do. Rook controlling area with towers, you healing, and Regulus staying back and sniping whoever was engaged. I also learned that I needed to figure out how to stun and avoid being stunned :P
I posted more of my thoughts if people are interested…
Basically though, I’m getting near done with all of the bull. I’ll give custom games another shot, but I’ve had little to no success with those. Pantheon seemed to be working the best, but since that closed down, I’m basically hitting AI games as much not on Skirmish.
My absolute biggest complaint at this point is that if I click Multiplayer, Log In and try to get a match going with Skirmish or Pantheon, I should NEVER see a got damned bot in the game. It’s the absolute stupid design decision for those of us that play multiplayer only. The bots aren’t even good enough to make do with, they are instead literal gold/exp for the other team as the game progresses. Making them worse than useless, an actual imbalance caused by the bot existing.
So, someone answer me this… why are there bots in my multiplayer games? I could be wrong, but I remember just waiting around for a game start in the first few days / week instead of getting games full of bots. Now it seems if the system runs into an error or whatever, I put into a game of bots, in which I’ve already been recorded a loss online.
Instead of the system just saying error, it feels like it’s trying to cover it’s ass by launching a game anyway. UGH.
Stardock and GPG, DO NOT PUT BOTS IN MY MULTIPLAYER GAME. For reals, yo. :D
I think the favor system in this game should be a little more forgiving. If I do a really good job in a game keeping my teammates alive, getting kills, and we just happen to lose a well-fought battle, I get what, 1/8th of what some of the winning team gets in favor points? That’s ridiculous. If my teammates suck but I do a really good job, I’m still doomed to earning about 20 favor.
Amounts of favor earned should be increased across the board for losers, but especially the ones who end up carrying their teams.
DDB
1731
They actually done a pretty shit job on the multiplayer intangibles IMO. The favor system is radically rewarding to the winner, so people quit early when they start losing. They also give out way too much gold for killing an enemy Demigod, which also contributes to people quitting once they die and feel like they’ve handed the other team victory on a silver platter.
Yet I see on the developer blog that Brad thinks that the problem with “rage-quitters” is that they want a button to resign from the game. sigh The reason that people are “rage-quitting” is because Demigod gives the player no meta-game reason to stay in the game even when losing. Also, it disproportionally rewards slaying an enemy demigod, thus making the rest of the game a tremendous uphill slog for the guy who got killed.
Deluxe Database and Mr. Austin, there are favor payoffs for different awards, and your team doesn’t have to win the game for you to get the award. Of course, favor has to actually work for this to be taken into account…
As for “disproportionately rewarding slaying an enemy”, I’d argue that’s kind of the point of the game. You might as well say football disproportionately rewards a team for getting touchdowns.
-Tom
DDB
1733
Huh, and here most of the time I thought it was to smash the apponent’s citadel/fortress. A more accurate analogy would be to say that a football team is awarded the equivalent of a field goal’s points for getting sacks.
Also since you seem to want to insist on calling me Deluxe Database, I’ll let you know what my initials really stand for: Double Down Daveboy. The origin of which comes from a long night of blackjack at the Barona Indian Casino near San Diego. Yes, it’s stupid, which is why I go with DDB (and not DDDB, or DDD, or Double-Dee-Bee which is even dumber).
This is true. It’s just very difficult to get the awards if your team is lagging behind. I’ve gotten a couple and had my favor total be decent despite the loss, but most of the time I’ll end up with 20 and the winning team will end up with about 100-160.
I just got a loss for a game that I was disconnected from and went on to win. Protip: If you get disconnected, just quit out.
When you score a goal/touchdown in football, you don’t suddenly receive a large advantage over the other team. An equivalent would be if for every goal/touchdown you scored, one member of your team became significantly and immediately stronger or more skilled and the other team lost 1/4 of their team for 20 seconds, which doesn’t happen for obvious reasons.
DDB
1738
His analogy doesn’t work on any level. Mine is much better.
The thing is, the game is rocking so hard toward the winner right now (favor points are pitiful for the losers, getting killed gives gobs of gold to your assassin) that people are quitting out all the time after they’ve been killed once or twice. It’s not any fun to be face-raped by the same guy who killed you twice before (and spent all that tasty gold you gave him on Boot of Asskicking and Gloves of Total Murdery) and cost your team the match. People know the score, and they bail. I’ve played a couple dozen matches and can predict at the 10 minute mark who is going to win 90 percent of the time, because the game encourages steamrolling and quitting.
Also: There needs to be a healing award. Seriously.
http://img300.imageshack.us/my.php?image=demigodsednaskills.jpg
If there ever was a game when I carried a team, this was it. Just look at that kill spread! And for all that, I didn’t even get the most favor. :(
Look, I can’t be held accountable for my lack of knowledge in sports. Are you telling me the winning team in football doesn’t get a resource bonus? Because I’m pretty sure their production goes up by 10% or so.
But that’s simply the way RTSs and their ilk work. The winner tends to achieve his goals towards winning, which makes winning easier. Demigod is no different. If you don’t like the bonus the other team gets when you die, try not dying. Because playing a demigod-killer is an entirely viable way of advancing in the game. In fact, I’m pretty sure they made it that way intentionally!
-Tom
